Monday, 10 October 2011

Marriages not made in heaven

The homosexual marriage debate is not about homosexuality. It is not about 'gay-bashing' and Christians who are often intimidated by that unjust jibe should not be afraid to take on the government over the issue of redefining marriage. It is not even about marriage. It is about: who is God? Is God God? Or is the government God? For in the proposal to redefine an institution which has its roots in the Bible and in ancient antiquity, the government is behaving with breathtaking audacity worthy of atheistic totalitarianism. One is reminded of the attempts by the French and Russian Revolutions to redefine the week.

There is an elderly Christian lady of my acquaintance who regularly tries to persuade me that Tony Blair is the anti-Christ. I remain agnostic on that equation, but I will say that never has the whiff of sulphur hung so pungently over a political leader as when David Cameron (yes, that nice man who defends the family) announced last week that he would seek to redefine marriage, at the same time as he bullied the supine party faithful to applaud him.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less'.

'The question is,' said Alice 'whether you can make words mean so many different things'.

The question here, of course, is not just who is to be the master of words, but who is to define the reality that the words represent. The present government has taken upon itself that task.

There are two levels of reality. There is reality according to Truth, that which is as God made it, and of course marriage at this level will always be between a man and a woman. Nothing will ever change that. Homosexual marriage is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, and nothing the government ever does will be able to change that.

But there is another level of reality which is according to the Lie. This is the level at which people live most of their lives and which is the controlling sphere; it is the 'world', life according to the flesh. At this level meanings can be changed and manipulated. At this level marriage will, if the government has its way, come to include same sex relationships. People will be conned into living a lie. It is an example of the contemporary ability for what George Orwell would have called 'doublethink' in Newspeak (in '1984'):the acceptance of two mutually contradictory statements as correct (a very postmodern ability).

The government will have its work cut out. Why should marriage be restricted to one man / woman and A.N Other - why not allow for polygamy and polyandry? What will happen to the definition of adultery? And what of grounds for divorce?

Procreation does not feature as such in the present legal definition of marriage, but it is most certainly a key purpose of biblical marriage; clearly that will have to go.

This is without mentioning the place of religious bodies who will have all manner of objections to performing such ceremonies. My astonishment will sound naive I know but how can the government, for the sake of a small minority, go against millenia of religious belief and moral teaching of the world's major religions?

Christians must give the government a hard time over this issue; it is a most serious attack not only on Christian morality but on the nature of marriage and the family, on society, and on the prerogative of God to declare what is right.

'If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?'

The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord's throne is in heaven ; his eyes see, his eyelids test, the children of man.
The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence...
For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face'. (from Psalm 11:3 - 7).